Optogenetic Control of Bacterial Cell-Cell Adhesion Dynamics: Unraveling the Influence on Biofilm Architecture and Functionality.

The transition of bacteria from an individualistic to a biofilm lifestyle profoundly alters their biology. During biofilm development, the bacterial cell-cell adhesions are a major determinant of initial microcolonies, which serve as kernels for the subsequent microscopic and mesoscopic structure of the biofilm, and determine the resulting functionality. In this study, the significance of bacterial cell-cell adhesion dynamics on bacterial aggregation and biofilm maturation is elucidated. Using photoswitchable adhesins between bacteria, modifying the dynamics of bacterial cell-cell adhesions with periodic dark-light cycles is systematic. Dynamic cell-cell adhesions with liquid-like behavior improve bacterial aggregation and produce more compact microcolonies than static adhesions with solid-like behavior in both experiments and individual-based simulations. Consequently, dynamic cell-cell adhesions give rise to earlier quorum sensing activation, better intermixing of different bacterial populations, improved biofilm maturation, changes in the growth of cocultures, and higher yields in fermentation. The here presented approach of tuning bacterial cell-cell adhesion dynamics opens the door for regulating the structure and function of biofilms and cocultures with potential biotechnological applications.

Sound symbolic associations in Spanish emotional words: affective dimensions and discrete emotions.

Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary associations between word forms and meaning, such as those observed for some properties of sounds and size or shape. Recent evidence suggests that these connections extend to emotional concepts. Here we investigated two types of non-arbitrary relationships. Study 1 examined whether iconicity scores (i.e. resemblance-based mapping between aspects of a word's form and its meaning) for words can be predicted from ratings in the affective dimensions of valence and arousal and/or the discrete emotions of happiness, anger, fear, disgust and sadness. Words denoting negative concepts were more likely to have more iconic word forms. Study 2 explored whether statistical regularities in single phonemes (i.e. systematicity) predicted ratings in affective dimensions and/or discrete emotions. Voiceless (/p/, /t/) and voiced plosives (/b/, /d/, /g/) were related to high arousing words, whereas high arousing negative words tended to include fricatives (/s/, /z/). Hissing consonants were also more likely to occur in words denoting all negative discrete emotions. Additionally, words conveying certain discrete emotions included specific phonemes. Overall, our data suggest that emotional features might explain variations in iconicity and provide new insight about phonemic patterns showing sound symbolic associations with the affective properties of words.

Suicidio más allá del diagnóstico: un enfoque centrado en la persona y su circunstancia / Suicide Beyond Diagnosis: A Person and Their Circumstances-Centered Approach

Existe una pluralidad de enfoques sobre el suicidio. En la literatura científica y en el ámbito sanitario es hegemónico el modelo biomédico. En este trabajo se presen-ta un modelo alternativo, existencial-contextual, de estudio, comprensión, prevención y posvención del suicidio en el ámbito sanitario. El trabajo se divide en dos partes. La primera expone los tres elementos esenciales del modelo existencial-contextual: la no-ción de persona, el concepto de problemas de la vida y la práctica de la relación de cui-dado y acompañamiento. La segunda desarrolla algunas de las diferencias asistenciales más importantes entre el modelo biomédico y el existencial-contextual del suicidio. Se concluye en la necesidad de superar el paradigma suicidológico biomédico tradicional y construir un espacio amplio transdisciplinar de reflexión suicidológica crítica a la altura de nuestro tiempo. Este cambio de paradigma requiere pasar de una lógica que prioriza lo patológico-biológico-farmacológico a otra socio-psico-política del suicidio que integre las aportaciones del modelo biomédico sin reducirse a ellas. (AU)

There is a plurality of understanding approaches to suicide. In the scientific literature and the healthcare field, the biomedical model is hegemonic. This paper pre-sents an alternative existential-contextual model for the study, understanding, preven-tion and postvention of suicide in the healthcare field. The academic paper is divided into two parts. The first part sets out the three essential elements of the existential-contex-tual model: the notion of personhood, the concept of life problems and the practice of caring and supportive relationships. The second one develops some of the most impor-tant differences in care between the biomedical and the existential-contextual models of suicide. It concludes with the need to overcome the traditional biomedical suicidological paradigm and to build a broad transdisciplinary space for critical suicidological reflection that is up to date with our times. This paradigm shift requires moving from a logic that prioritizes the pathological-biological-pharmacological to a socio-psycho-political logic of suicide that integrates the contributions of the biomedical model without being reduced to them. (AU)

CACTUS: a computational framework for generating realistic white matter microstructure substrates.

Monte-Carlo diffusion simulations are a powerful tool for validating tissue microstructure models by generating synthetic diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance images (DW-MRI) in controlled environments. This is fundamental for understanding the link between micrometre-scale tissue properties and DW-MRI signals measured at the millimetre-scale, optimizing acquisition protocols to target microstructure properties of interest, and exploring the robustness and accuracy of estimation methods. However, accurate simulations require substrates that reflect the main microstructural features of the studied tissue. To address this challenge, we introduce a novel computational workflow, CACTUS (Computational Axonal Configurator for Tailored and Ultradense Substrates), for generating synthetic white matter substrates. Our approach allows constructing substrates with higher packing density than existing methods, up to 95% intra-axonal volume fraction, and larger voxel sizes of up to 500µm3 with rich fibre complexity. CACTUS generates bundles with angular dispersion, bundle crossings, and variations along the fibres of their inner and outer radii and g-ratio. We achieve this by introducing a novel global cost function and a fibre radial growth approach that allows substrates to match predefined targeted characteristics and mirror those reported in histological studies. CACTUS improves the development of complex synthetic substrates, paving the way for future applications in microstructure imaging.

Pupillometric and behavioural evidence shows no differences between polyseme and homonym processing.

Ambiguous words can have related meanings (polysemes, e.g., newspaper) or unrelated meanings (homonyms, e.g., bat). Here we examined the processing of both types of ambiguous words (as well as unambiguous words) in tasks of increasing level of semantic engagement. Four experiments were conducted in which the degree of semantic engagement of the task was manipulated: lexical decision task (Experiments 1 and 2), semantic categorization task (Experiment 3) and number-of-meanings task (Experiment 4). RTs and pupillary response were recorded. To our knowledge, pupillary response had never been used before to study ambiguous words processing in isolation. Results showed faster RTs for ambiguous words with respect to unambiguous words in LDT, and larger pupil dilation was observed for ambiguous words in comparison to unambiguous ones in number-of-meanings task. However, differences between polysemes and homonyms were not observed in any task. These results provide no evidence that polysemes and homonyms are processed differently.

Cellular Exchange Imaging (CEXI): Evaluation of a diffusion model including water exchange in cells using numerical phantoms of permeable spheres.

PURPOSE: Biophysical models of diffusion MRI have been developed to characterize microstructure in various tissues, but existing models are not suitable for tissue composed of permeable spherical cells. In this study we introduce Cellular Exchange Imaging (CEXI), a model tailored for permeable spherical cells, and compares its performance to a related Ball & Sphere (BS) model that neglects permeability. METHODS: We generated DW-MRI signals using Monte-Carlo simulations with a PGSE sequence in numerical substrates made of spherical cells and their extracellular space for a range of membrane permeability. From these signals, the properties of the substrates were inferred using both BS and CEXI models. RESULTS: CEXI outperformed the impermeable model by providing more stable estimates cell size and intracellular volume fraction that were diffusion time-independent. Notably, CEXI accurately estimated the exchange time for low to moderate permeability levels previously reported in other studies ( κ < 25 µ m / s $$ \kappa <25\kern0.3em \mu \mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s} $$ ). However, in highly permeable substrates ( κ = 50 µ m / s $$ \kappa =50\kern0.3em \mu \mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s} $$ ), the estimated parameters were less stable, particularly the diffusion coefficients. CONCLUSION: This study highlights the importance of modeling the exchange time to accurately quantify microstructure properties in permeable cellular substrates. Future studies should evaluate CEXI in clinical applications such as lymph nodes, investigate exchange time as a potential biomarker of tumor severity, and develop more appropriate tissue models that account for anisotropic diffusion and highly permeable membranes.

An Adenosylcobalamin Specific Whole-Cell Biosensor.

Vitamin B12 (cobalamin) is essential for human health and its deficiency results in anemia and neurological damage. Vitamin B12 exists in different forms with various bioactivity but most sensors are unable to discriminate between them. Here, a whole-cell agglutination assay that is specific for adenosylcobalamin (AboB12), which is one of two bioactive forms, is reported. This biosensor consists of Escherichia coli that express the AdoB12 specific binding domain of CarH at their surface. In the presence of AdoB12, CarH forms tetramers, which leads to specific bacterial cell-cell adhesions and agglutination. These CarH tetramers disassemble upon green light illumination such that reversion of the bacterial aggregation can serve as internal quality control. The agglutination assay has a detection limit of 500 nм AdoB12, works in protein-poor biofluids such as urine, and has high specificity to AdoB12 over other forms of vitamin B12 as also demonstrated with commercially available supplements. This work is a proof of concept for a cheap and easy-to-readout AdoB12 sensor that can be implemented at the point-of-care to monitor high-dose vitamin B12 supplementation.

Emoji-SP, the Spanish emoji database: Visual complexity, familiarity, frequency of use, clarity, and emotional valence and arousal norms for 1031 emojis.

This article presents subjective norms for 1031 emojis in six dimensions: visual complexity, familiarity, frequency of use, clarity, emotional valence, and emotional arousal. This is the largest normative study conducted so far that relies on subjective ratings. Unlike the few existing normative studies, which mainly comprise face emojis, here we present a wide range of emoji categories. We also examine the correlations between the dimensions assessed. Our results show that, in terms of their affective properties, emojis are analogous to other stimuli, such as words, showing the expected U-shaped relationship between valence and arousal. The relationship between affective properties and other dimensions (e.g., between valence and familiarity) is also similar to the relationship observed in words, in the sense that positively valenced emojis are more familiar than negative ones. These findings suggest that emojis are suitable stimuli for studying affective processing. Emoji-SP will be highly valuable for researchers of various fields interested in emojis, including computer science, communication, linguistics, and psychology. The full set of norms is available at: https://osf.io/dtfjv/ .

Your words went straight to my heart: the role of emotional prototypicality in the recognition of emotion-label words.

Emotional words differ in how they acquire their emotional charge. There is a relevant distinction between emotion-label words (those that directly name an emotion, e.g., "joy" or "sadness") and emotion-laden words (those that do not name an emotion, but can provoke it, e.g., "party" or "death"). In this work, we focused on emotion-label words. These words vary in their emotional prototypicality, which indicates the extent to which the word refers to an emotion. We conducted two lexical decision experiments to examine the role played by emotional prototypicality in the recognition of emotion-label words. The results showed that emotional prototypicality has a facilitative effect in word recognition. Emotional prototypicality would ease conceptual access, thus facilitating the retrieval of emotional content during word recognition. In addition to the theoretical implications, the evidence gathered in this study also highlights the need to consider emotional prototypicality in the selection of emotion-label words in future studies.

Corrigendum: Disentangling the role of deviant letter position on cognate word processing.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.731312.].

Psychological Impact of COVID-19 in the Setting of Dentistry: A Review Article.

The worldwide pandemic has exposed healthcare professionals to a high risk of infection, exacerbating the situation of uncertainty caused by COVID-19. The objective of this review was to evaluate the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on dental professionals and their patients. A literature review was conducted using Medline-Pubmed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases, excluding systematic reviews, narratives, meta-analyses, case reports, book chapters, short communications, and congress papers. A modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) was used to evaluate the quality of the selected studies. The search retrieved 3879 articles, and 123 of these were selected for the review (7 longitudinal and 116 cross-sectional studies). Elevated anxiety levels were observed in dental professionals, especially in younger and female professionals. Except for orthodontic treatments, patients reported a high level of fear that reduced their demand for dentist treatment to emergency cases alone. The results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has had psychological and emotional consequences for dental professionals and their patients. Further research is necessary to evaluate the persistence of this problem over time.

High Performance Computing PP-Distance Algorithms to Generate X-ray Spectra from 3D Models.

X-ray crystallography is a powerful method that has significantly contributed to our understanding of the biological function of proteins and other molecules. This method relies on the production of crystals that, however, are usually a bottleneck in the process. For some molecules, no crystallization has been achieved or insufficient crystals were obtained. Some other systems do not crystallize at all, such as nanoparticles which, because of their dimensions, cannot be treated by the usual crystallographic methods. To solve this, whole pair distribution function has been proposed to bridge the gap between Bragg and Debye scattering theories. To execute a fitting, the spectra of several different constructs, composed of millions of particles each, should be computed using a particle-pair or particle-particle (pp) distance algorithm. Using this computation as a test bench for current field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology, we evaluate how the parallel computation capability of FPGAs can be exploited to reduce the computation time. We present two different solutions to the problem using two state-of-the-art FPGA technologies. In the first one, the main C program uses OmpSs (a high-level programming model developed at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, that enables task offload to different high-performance computing devices) for task invocation, and kernels are built with OpenCL using reduced data sizes to save transmission time. The second approach uses task and data parallelism to operate on data locally and update data globally in a decoupled task. Benchmarks have been evaluated over an Intel D5005 Programmable Acceleration Card, computing a model of 2 million particles in 81.57 s - 24.5 billion atom pairs per second (bapps)- and over a ZU102 in 115.31 s. In our last test, over an up-to-date Alveo U200 board, the computation lasted for 34.68 s (57.67 bapps). In this study, we analyze the results in relation to the classic terms of speed-up and efficiency and give hints for future improvements focused on reducing the global job time.

I want it small or, rather, give me a bunch: the role of evaluative morphology on the assessment of the emotional properties of words.

ABSTRACTEvaluative markers of diminution and augmentation typically express quantity or intensity. Prior evidence suggests that they also convey emotions, although it remains unexplored as to whether this function is mediated by their role in expressing quantification/intensification. Here we investigated the effects of evaluative suffixes on the assessment of word affective properties by asking participants (N = 300) to score valence and arousal features for augmentatives, diminutives and base words with negative, positive or neutral valence. Diminutives and, to a lesser extent, augmentatives were assessed more positively than base forms in negative words and more negatively than bases in positive words. The capacity of diminution to express attenuated emotions is in line with its function in conveying quantity. By contrast, valence effects for augmentatives suggests a role in expressing pejoration and amelioration that is not mediated by quantification. With regard to arousal, negative, neutral and positive augmentatives showed higher scores than base words, which, in addition, were also rated higher than diminutives. These incremental effects suggest that suffixes which convey larger quantity are also associated with increased arousal. Thus, with the exception of valence effects in augmentatives, it seems that evaluative suffixes encode both valence and arousal through quantification.

Unraveling the Mystery About the Negative Valence Bias: Does Arousal Account for Processing Differences in Unpleasant Words?

Many studies have found that the emotional content of words affects visual word recognition. However, most of them have only considered affective valence, finding inconsistencies regarding the direction of the effects, especially in unpleasant words. Recent studies suggest that arousal might explain why not all unpleasant words elicit the same behavior. The aim of the present research was to study the role of arousal in unpleasant word recognition. To do that, we carried out an ERP experiment in which participants performed a lexical decision task that included unpleasant words which could vary across three levels of arousal (intermediate, high, and very high) and words which were neutral in valence and had an intermediate level of arousal. Results showed that, within unpleasant words, those intermediate in arousal evoked smaller LPC amplitudes than words that were high or very high in arousal, indicating that arousal affects unpleasant word recognition. Critically, arousal determined whether the effect of negative valence was found or not. When arousal was not matched between unpleasant and neutral valenced words, the effect of emotionality was weak in the behavioral data and absent in the ERP data. However, when arousal was intermediate in both unpleasant and neutral valenced words, larger EPN amplitudes were reported for the former, pointing to an early allocation of attention. Interestingly, these unpleasant words which had an intermediate level of arousal showed a subsequent inhibitory effect in that they evoked smaller LPC amplitudes and led to slower reaction times and more errors than neutral words. Our results highlight the relevance that the arousal level has for the study of negative valence effects in word recognition.

Disentangling the Role of Deviant Letter Position on Cognate Word Processing.

The way of coding letter position has been extensively assessed during the recognition of native words, leading to the development of a new generation of models that assume more flexible letter position coding schemes compared to classical computational models such as the interactive activation (IA) model. However, determining whether similar letter position encoding mechanisms occur during the bilingual word recognition has been largely less explored despite its implications for the leading model of bilingual word recognition (multilink) as it assumes the input-coding scheme of the IA model. In this study, we aimed to examine this issue through the manipulation of the position of the deviant letter of cognate words (external and internal letters). Two experiments were conducted with Catalan-Spanish bilinguals (a masked priming lexical decision task and a two-alternative forced-choice task) and their respective monolingual controls. The results revealed a differential processing for the first letter in comparison to the other letters as well as modulations as a function of language cue, suggesting amendments to the input-coding scheme of the multilink model.

Conducta suicida y periodo perinatal: entre el tabú y la incomprensión / Suicidal behavior and the perinatal period: taboo and is understanding

El suicidio es la primera causa de muerte de las mujeres durante el periodo perinatal, que comprende desde el embarazo hasta un año después del parto. Hay apoyo empírico suficiente para afirmar que las mujeres embarazadas tienen mayor ideación suicida que su correspondiente grupo de comparación en la población general. A pesar de estos datos, este tipo de problemas no suelen ni prevenirse ni reconocerse adecuadamente. Sin embargo, si las disonancias y dilemas asociados a la maternidad, así como los problemas de salud mental, no se previenen o se abordan adecuadamente, éstos pueden afectar al bienestar de las mujeres, al de sus hijos y al de otros miembros de la familia. Se exponen los factores implicados en la conducta suicida de este grupo de mujeres, así como algunas directrices generales de actuación. Se reclama la necesaria puesta en marcha de estrategias de prevención. (AU)

Suicide is the leading cause of death for women during the perinatal period, which commences in pregnancy and finishes one year after delivery. Empirical evidence from previous studies shows that pregnant women have greater suicidal ideation than their comparison group in the general population. However, there is a tendency for these problems to be neither prevented nor adequately recognized. Nevertheless, if the dissonancesand dilemmas associated with motherhood, as well as mental health problems, are not prevented or adequately addressed, they can affect thewell-being of women, their children, and other family members. Risk and protective factors for suicidal behavior in this group of women are discussed, as well as general principles of action. The need for the implementation of prevention strategies is highlighted. (AU)

Of Beavers and Tables: The Role of Animacy in the Processing of Grammatical Gender Within a Picture-Word Interference Task.

Grammatical gender processing during language production has classically been studied using the so-called picture-word interference (PWI) task. In this procedure, participants are presented with pictures they must name using target nouns while ignoring superimposed written distractor nouns. Variations in response times are expected depending on the congruency between the gender values of targets and distractors. However, there have been disparate results in terms of the mandatory character of an agreement context to observe competitive gender effects and the interpretation of the direction of these effects in Romance languages, this probably due to uncontrolled variables such as animacy. In the present study, we conducted two PWI experiments with European Portuguese speakers who were asked to produce bare nouns. The percentage of animate targets within the list was manipulated: 0, 25, 50, and 100%. A gender congruency effect was found restricted to the 0% list (all targets were inanimate). Results support the selection of gender in transparent languages in the absence of an agreement context, as predicted by the Gender Acquisition and Processing (GAP) hypothesis (Sá-Leite et al., 2019), and are interpreted through the attentional mechanisms involved in the PWI paradigm, in which the processing of animate targets would be favored to the detriment of distractors due to biological relevance and semantic prioritization.

Psycholinguistic and affective norms for 1,252 Spanish idiomatic expressions.

This study provides psycholinguistic and affective norms for 1,252 Spanish idiomatic expressions. A total of 965 Spanish native speakers rated the idioms in 7 subjective variables: familiarity, knowledge of the expression, decomposability, literality, predictability, valence and arousal. Correlational analyses showed that familiarity has a strong positive correlation with knowledge, suggesting that the knowledge of the figurative meaning of an idiom is highly related to its frequency of use. Familiarity has a moderate positive correlation with final word predictability, indicating that the more familiar an idiom is rated, the more predictable it tends to be. Decomposability shows a moderate positive correlation with literality, suggesting that those idioms whose figurative meaning is easier to deduce from their constituents tend to have a plausible literal meaning. In affective terms, Spanish idioms tend to convey more negative (66%) than positive meanings (33%). Furthermore, valence and arousal show a quadratic relationship, in line with the typical U-shaped relationship found for single words, which means that the more emotionally valenced an idiom is rated, the more arousing it is considered to be. This database will provide researchers with a large pool of stimuli for studying the representation and processing of idioms in healthy and clinical populations.

Lignin-Based Polymer Electrolyte Membranes for Sustainable Aqueous Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells.

In the quest for sustainable materials for quasi-solid-state (QS) electrolytes in aqueous dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), novel bioderived polymeric membranes were prepared in this work by reaction of preoxidized kraft lignin with poly(ethylene glycol)diglycidylether (PEGDGE). The effect of the PEGDGE/lignin relative proportions on the characteristics of the obtained membranes was thoroughly investigated, and clear structure-property correlations were highlighted. In particular, the glass transition temperature of the materials was found to decrease by increasing the amount of PEGDGE in the formulation, indicating that polyethylene glycol chains act as flexible segments that increase the molecular mobility of the three-dimensional polymeric network. Concurrently, their swelling ability in liquid electrolyte was found to increase with the concentration of PEGDGE, which was also shown to influence the ionic transport efficiency within the membrane. The incorporation of these lignin-based cross-linked systems as QS electrolyte frameworks in aqueous DSSCs allowed the preparation of devices with excellent long-term stability under UV-vis light, which were found to be superior to benchmark QS-DSSCs incorporating state-of-the-art carboxymethylcellulose membranes. This study provides the first demonstration of lignin-based QS electrolytes for stable aqueous DSSCs, establishing a straightforward strategy to exploit the potential of lignin as a functional polymer precursor for the field of sustainable photovoltaic devices.

Coelimycin Synthesis Activatory Proteins Are Key Regulators of Specialized Metabolism and Precursor Flux in Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2).

Many microbial specialized metabolites are industrially relevant agents but also serve as signaling molecules in intra-species and even inter-kingdom interactions. In the antibiotic-producing Streptomyces, members of the SARP (Streptomyces antibiotic regulatory proteins) family of regulators are often encoded within biosynthetic gene clusters and serve as their direct activators. Coelimycin is the earliest, colored specialized metabolite synthesized in the life cycle of the model organism Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2). Deletion of its two SARP activators cpkO and cpkN abolished coelimycin synthesis and resulted in dramatic changes in the production of the later, stationary-phase antibiotics. The underlying mechanisms of these phenotypes were deregulation of precursor flux and quorum sensing, as shown by label-free, bottom-up shotgun proteomics. Detailed profiling of promoter activities demonstrated that CpkO is the upper-level cluster activator that induces CpkN, while CpkN activates type II thioesterase ScoT, necessary for coelimycin synthesis. What is more, we show that cpkN is regulated by quorum sensing gamma-butyrolactone receptor ScbR.